Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

er's namesake ship, proving once again that there was no escape from recur
rence.
We reached Rawalpindi by hot, dusty train. (The General and Emerald travelle
d in Air Conditioned; they bought the rest of us ordinary first class ticket
s.) But it was cool when we reached 'Pindi and I set foot, for the first tim
e, in a northern city… I remember it as a low, anonymous town; army barracks
, fruit shops, a sports goods industry; tall military men in the streets; Je
eps; furniture carvers; polo. A town in which it was possible to be very, ve
ry cold. And in a new and expensive housing development, a vast house surrou
nded by a high wall which was topped by barbed wire and patrolled by sentrie
s: General Zulfikar's home. There was a bath next to the double bed in which
the General slept; there was a house catch phrase: 'Let's get organized!';
the servants wore green military jerseys and berets; in the evenings the odo
urs of bhang and charas floated up from their quarters. The furniture was ex
pensive and surprisingly beautiful; Emerald could not be faulted on her tast
e. It was a dull, lifeless house, for all its military airs; even the goldfi
sh in the tank set in the dining room wall seemed to bubble listlessly; perh
aps its most interesting inhabitant was not even human. You will permit me,
for a moment, to describe the General's dog Bonzo. Excuse me: the General's
old beagle bitch.
This goitred creature of papery antiquity had been supremely indolent and us
eless all her life; but while I was still recovering from sunstroke she crea
ted the first furore of our stay a sort of trailer for the 'revolution of th
e pepperpots'. General Zulfikar had taken her one day to a military training
camp, where he was to watch a team of mine detectors at work in a specially
prepared minefield. (The General was anxious to mine the entire Indo Pak bo
rder. 'Let's get organized!' he would exclaim. 'Let's give those Hindus some
thing to worry! We'll blow their invaders into so many pieces, there'll be n
o damn thing left to reincarnate.' He was not, however, overly concerned abo
ut the frontiers of East Pakistan, being of the view that 'those damn blacki
es can look after themselves'.)… And now Bonzo slipped her leash, and someho
w evading the frantically clutching hands of young jawans, waddled out into
the minefield.
Blind panic. Mine detecting soldiers picking their way in frenzied slow mot
ion through the blasting zone. General Zulfikar and other Army brass diving
for shelter behind their grandstand, awaiting the explosion… But there was
none; and when the flower of the Pakistan Army peeped out from inside dust
bins or behind benches, it saw Bonzo picking her way daintily through the f
ield of the lethal seeds, nose to ground, Bonzo the insouciant, quite at he
r ease. General Zulfikar flung his peaked cap in the air. 'Damn marvellous!
' he cried in the thin voice which squeezed between his nose and chin, 'The